Kentucky Historical Society is Hitting the Road

This video will be featured in a traveling exhibition and shown throughout the state to middle and high school students. It offers a very brief overview of slavery’s centrality to Kentucky Civil War experience. Not sure what I think of the 3d motion graphics when there is such a rich body of photographs and other period illustrations to utilize. It’s also difficult to compress such a complex story in just over three minutes. What do you think?

I agree with you, Kevin. The subject is far too complex for a 3 minute cartoon show. But it is a step in the right direction and doesn’t use the old canard of states rights when presenting the cause of the war but puts the slavery issue front and center. What was it that someone observed? That Kentucky after the war during Reconstruction was the most “Confederate” state in the south?

I’ll jump in as both a regular reader and a member of the team who put this exhibit together. First, thanks for the kind words!

Of course, time and space restrict how much of and how many stories you can tell, but that’s the public historian’s constant challenge. As Kevin pointed out, though, this video is part of a suite of educational activities with scaled lesson plans for 4-5th grade, 8th, and HS to accompany our travelling exhibit, so this isn’t the only thing students will encounter.

This video is another overt politically correct distortion interpreting Slavery as the sole central cause of the war. Slavery was not the base of the Southern Agrarian economy, the produce was not the labor force, but what was produced from that labor, the crops, livestock, timber, which also fed the Northern Industrialization for products made from that produce. Slavery was certainly a factor, included within the American economy North and South, and for some Americans, it was a certainly human produce, but it was not the foremost investment in wealth. The citizens of the Southern states which seceded were not defending slavery alone or primarily, they were defending themselves and everything they had within the complexity of “States Rights”. Slavery was not solely in Southerners reasoning for defending themselves against federal centralism of a Republican regime intent on ending Southern Agrarian political power in the country. The Lincoln regimes war was not intent upon some humanitarian effort ,or for freedom, but one of Republican and Northern domination for themselves.

Thanks, Michael. So nice of you to share your expertise with all of us as opposed to the staff at one of the most prestigious historical institutions in this country. Once again your comments betray utter ignorance of the best scholarship in this particular area. I particularly like the following sentence:

Slavery was not the base of the Southern Agrarian economy, the produce was not the labor force, but what was produced from that labor, the crops, livestock, timber, which also fed the Northern Industrialization for products made from that produce.

Michael wrote: “The Lincoln regimes war was not intent upon some humanitarian effort ,or for freedom, but one of Republican and Northern domination for themselves.”

The video says that Kentucky blacks fought for freedom. It does not describe Lincoln’s motives. It does say that “many Kentuckians on both sides believed they were fighting to preserve slavery.” This seems to contradict your characterization.

Overall, it is a good film with a decent chance of engaging young people.

Slavery was not the “foremost investment in wealth” you say?? In fact, the value of all slaves in 1860 exceeded the value of all the factories, banks, and railroads in America at the same time. So, please stop posting nonsense all over the Internet.